Internet speeds explained: How slow internet affects you

Of the few things that one can arguably never complain about being too fast, it is Internet speed. The long time it takes to load a page, the interruptions while streaming content, or having a Zoom meeting–they all can be highly frustrating. These issues are becoming increasingly common as more and more people are depending on the Internet. It’s not just Gen-Zers who found a full-fledged lifestyle on TikTok and social media but also professionals who are increasingly working from home and relying on their own Internet connections to fulfill their work obligations. One would think that with the increasing demands, the infrastructure would improve and expand in capacity in proportion. 

Alas, that is rarely the case, as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are looking for the biggest bang for the buck. In an effort to cut costs, they tend to add as many subscribers as possible who are using the same pipe to the Internet. The more subscribers they have, the more profits they will make, and the more likely their customers experience poor Internet. 

ISP oversubscription rates are often in the range of 25:1 and up to 100:1, which means the ISP is selling 100 times more access bandwidth than they are purchasing in uplink bandwidth. It is more money for them, but we as consumers bear the brunt of this model and have to make do with subpar Internet. How do ISPs allocate the supply to the increasing demand then? Well, ISPs start deliberately slowing down bandwidth, in a very common practice known as throttling. 

Simply put, “ISP throttling is a money-saving tactic used by Internet companies to moderate network traffic, control bandwidth congestion, and mandate data limits.” So if your Internet slows down out of the blue even though you have done your troubleshooting and everything seems fine from your end, your ISP is limiting your bandwidth to accommodate more users.

These practices also highlight how one should really question the Internet speed packages advertised by ISP providers. They often cover their bases by promising speeds “up to” a certain mbps number. For the majority of the time, you are possibly using the Internet at a speed way below what they have promised. You may occasionally experience the Internet speed of what you paid for, but certainly not all the time. In times of high demand when too many people are sharing bandwidth, you will often find yourself getting the short end of the stick. 

What is My Internet Speed?

You may be curious about what your Internet speed is, and there are many tools online that can find that out for you. The tool here may be the most accurate and gives you the basics of all you need to know about how your Internet is performing: latency, download speed, and upload speed. 

It is important to differentiate between latency and bandwidth. Bandwidth determines how fast data can be transferred over a specific amount of time – higher bandwidth means faster Internet. Latency is the time it takes for data to be transferred from its original source and the response it gets from the destination, measured in milliseconds. So you may have higher bandwidth but lower latency, and the effects of that can be particularly experienced with gaming. Gamers may find their players randomly appearing and disappearing all over the screen, and overall gameplay running achingly slow. Any gamer can relate to how frustrating that is.

How to Know What Internet Speed You Need

We will never be able to guess how your specific Internet connection is performing based on these three metrics. But to put it in very simple terms, you really want the latency number to be as low as possible, and the download and upload speed to be as high as possible–and also symmetrical. This is a very helpful benchmark that will help you read your results: